Posted on 07/03/2005 5:11:22 PM PDT by TheOtherOne
Troubling Questions Surround Case of Idaho Girl Found After Six Weeks
Published: Jul 3, 2005 COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho (AP) - A day after missing 8-year-old Shasta Groene turned up with a registered sex offender at a Denny's restaurant in her hometown, investigators struggled with a troubling question: What happened to her 9-year-old brother Dylan?
The man with Shasta, Joseph Edward Duncan III, was arrested and charged with kidnapping, but he has requested a lawyer and is refusing to talk to authorities, Kootenai County Sheriff's Capt. Ben Wolfinger said Sunday.
Duncan won't be appointed a public defender until a court hearing Tuesday, Wolfinger said.
In the meantime, the search for Dylan continues, though investigators say the information they have points to the boy being dead.
"Our goal is to find Dylan one way or another," Wolfinger said.
Investigators haven't revealed what they believe happened to Dylan or how long they believe the boy was alive after the children's mother, 13-year-old brother and their mother's boyfriend were bludgeoned to death in their home on May 16.
There was no sign of the boy when Shasta was found around 2 a.m. Saturday in the restaurant with Duncan.
Shasta was recognized by a waitress at the restaurant, who called police, and the little girl was reunited that afternoon with her father, Steve Groene. She was reported in good condition at the hospital Sunday, Wolfinger said. The girl's father has declined requests for interviews.
The arrest of Duncan, a 42-year-old from Fargo, N.D., who had spent more a decade in prison for raping a boy at gunpoint when Duncan, has raised many questions and provided few answers.
"Where have Duncan and Shasta and Dylan been the last six weeks? Was Duncan involved in the triple homicide? Were other people involved? Is so, who and where are they?" Wolfinger said.
"I think why is probably the biggest question we have," he said.
Shasta spoke at length with investigators on Saturday, but authorities are treating her gently, Wolfinger said.
"She's a little girl who's been through who knows what in the past six weeks," he said.
Authorities believe Duncan, who was raised in Tacoma, Wash., remained in the Pacific Northwest with the children during the six weeks they were missing. Wolfinger hasn't said if authorities believe Duncan was involved in the slayings, and it wasn't known if he had any connection with the victims.
Half way across the country, officials were facing another tough question: Why had Duncan been released on bail earlier this year after being charged with molesting a 6-year-old boy at a Minnesota school playground.
Prosecutors in Becker County, Minn., where Duncan was released, did not return calls seeking comment. Police in Fargo said they had been looking for Duncan since May, but had no indication he had fled to Idaho.
Days before the children disappeared, an ominous message was posted on a Web site that officials said Duncan maintained.
"I am scared, alone and confused, and my reaction is to strike out toward the perceived source of my misery, society," the May 11 entry said. "My intent is to harm society as much as I can, then die."
Forty investigators were working the case Sunday, with the FBI and Idaho State Patrol backing up city and county police.
A search of the stolen Jeep Duncan was driving has been completed, and the evidence was forwarded to the FBI, Wolfinger said. He declined to describe that evidence.
The astonishing emergence of Shasta more than six weeks after she disappeared, countered by her brother's continued, ominous absence, created mixed emotions here.
"We're happy about Shasta," Bill Todd, owner of Davis Donuts, said Sunday. "But I'm sad there's no good news on Dylan yet."
"There can be happy endings," employee Darcy Furey said hopefully.
Todd's business was one of many that taped up posters of the missing children and displayed readerboards praying for their safe return. The case dominated conversations in this northern Idaho resort community of 35,000, decked with flags for the sunny Fourth of July weekend - a big event in tourist-dependent Coeur d'Alene.
Investigators had interviewed hundreds of people, searched through 800 tons of trash and fielded more than 2,000 tips.
In the end, the restaurant where Shasta was found was just a few miles from her family's home.
AP-ES-07-03-05 1945EDT
i can MAKE HIM BELIEVE his whole body is on fire... for as long as i like and without any tissue damage in the process.
When you see a story like this it makes you realize there are really some evil people in this world.
Not me. I don't want to torture him. I just want him dead, removed from society permanently. He gave up his right to exist, period. We should have no qualms about executing him the day of the verdict.
If that is cruel and unusual, then I agree with you.
There's nothing "cruel and unusual" about a bullet in the brain. It should be applied early and often to monsters like this.
Exactly right.
I wonder how many at DU were molested by gay men when they were boys? Evil spreads.
Have any of yall been to his blog?
"Half way across the country, officials were facing another tough question: Why had Duncan been released on bail earlier this year after being charged with molesting a 6-year-old boy at a Minnesota school playground."
Ya THINK? Man, these cases just burn me up! Has there been a single week this year (or last year, or last, ad infinitum) where some prior sex offender HASN'T harmed a child? Cripes. This country really needs to get a grip.
Why does our society allow children to be put in danger this way from these sub-humans? It's infuriating!
I got flamed for this once before. But to me, this just shows the joke of sentencing. You can get a life sentence without parole for having 100 pot plants, but we regularly let child molestors out. I think we have our priorities backwards.
TheOtherOne's ranking of criminal threats:
1. Terrorist hell bent on attacking America
2. Murderers.
3. Rapists and Child Molestors.
Beyond those few things I am open to sentences less than death or life in prison.
I thought the grandmother said the little boy was alive? What's going on?
I don't question the Constitution - I question our fuzzy headed morals that think it's okay to let someone like this guy live after the FIRST offense. Allow me to quote from Robert Heinlein in Starship Troopers:
"If Dillinger had understood what he was doing (which seemed incredible) then he got what was coming to him...except that it seemed a shame that he hadn't suffered as much as had little Barbara Anne - he practically hadn't suffered at all.
But suppose, as seemed more likely, that he was so crazy that he had never been aware that he was doing anything wrong? What then?
Well, we shoot mad dogs, don't we?
Yes, but being crazy that way is a sickness--
I couldn't see but two possibilities. Either he couldn't be made well -- in which case he was better dead for his own sake and for the safety of others -- or he could be treated and made sane. In which case (it seemed to me) if he ever became sane enough for civilized society...and thought over what he had done while he was "sick" -- what could be left for him but suicide? How could he live with himself?
And suppose he escaped before he was cured and did the same thing again? And maybe again? How do you explain that to bereaved parents? In view of his record?
I couldn't see but one answer."
I don't see anything wrong with the death penalty. I'm from Texas.
I hope the brother is found alive. This is such a horror story. I also am furious with the judge who let him out on $15,000 bail. Whoever supported that decision should also be held responsible.
Why can' we castrate all child molesters? Doesn't castration remove all sexual urges and thus eliminate the danger from such people?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.